This week’s dream:

Buenos Aires is the new Paris, said Denny Lee in The New York Times. Drawn by the city’s Parisian-style architecture and cheap prices, legions of musicians, writers, artists, designers, and other bohemians-in-exile are transforming the “crooked back streets” of Argentina’s capital and largest city into “a throbbing hothouse of cool.” The city’s packed dance floors reverberate with avant-garde rhythms—notably an “electrotango sound known as experimental cumbia.” Video directors frequent tango ballrooms, scouting for English-speaking actors, and wine-soaked gallery openings and gay discos “are keeping insomniacs” up until dawn.

Buenos Aires used to be one of the world’s most expensive cities. Its broad boulevards, lined with Belle Époque architecture, evoked the Champs-Élysées. Then came the humbling financial collapse of 2001. Overnight, the city became “one of the world’s great bargain spots.” Since

then, once-scruffy neighborhoods have been given hip Anglicized names such as Palermo SoHo and Palermo Hollywood. One of the edgiest art galleries is “irreverent, punk-inflected” Appetite in the San Telmo neighborhood. Its “cheeky blend of trash art” has proved so successful that a smaller outpost has now been opened in Brooklyn. The high-end fashion store Tramando in the Recoleta neighborhood has expanded to include outlets in Tokyo and New York’s meatpacking district.

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Diners seeking a Parisian atmosphere can head to Le Bar, a martini bar and restaurant started by French expatriates that has “sunken seats, cool lighting, and a rooftop terrace.” Another new French restaurant, Brasserie Pétanque, looks as if it were “transplanted tile by tile from the Left Bank.” Olsen, in Palermo Viego, serves Scandinavian and Argentine cuisine in a chic space “seemingly plucked out of Copenhagen.” Among the city’s most elegant hotels is the Philippe Starck–designed Faena Hotel + Universe, in the waterfront district of Puerto Madero. Occupying an old grain silo, it provides “over-the-top elegance” and unusual leisure facilities—including a Turkish bath and a cabaret stage.

Contact: Whatsupbuenosaires.com